A River in Egypt

My youngest brother had his first drink of beer at a backyard picnic when he was about five. Someone took a picture of him, fuzzy headed from a crewcut, wearing a striped shirt and baggy khaki pants, a can of beer tilted to his mouth and foam on his upper lip. It was, I suppose, meant to be cute.

By the time he was in junior high school, he was drinking every day and burying the beer cans under the backporch. By high school he'd graduated to hard liquor and had been brought home once or twice by the local police. High spirited, my mother told them, boys will be boys. He became a bartender, drifting from job to job in restaurants, bars, downtown hotels, even a local harbor cruise ship. He worked and lived the party life - experimenting with so called recreational drugs, sleeping all day and getting drunk at night. He wrecked a car or two, was arrested a time or two. He hardly ever drinks, my mother assured the police, I can't imagine what got into him. He married a girl who was also a bartender and they took on the world together - all night parties, binges, after hours clubs, fancy cars, expensive gifts. The money ran out and he had to borrow from my daddy to make the rent but he managed to maintain his lifestyle. He'll straighten up after the baby is born, my mother declared, you'll see.

At their first Christmas after the baby was born, there were drinks before dinner, drinks and wine with dinner, drinks after dinner, drinks in between and drinks for the road. The liquor cabinet was a maze of scotch, rum, boubon,

vodka, gin. There was a case of champagne chilling on the back porch, several cases of beer on the unheated side porch, two car trunks full of brandy. They do a lot of entertaining, my mother said, they have to be prepared.

As defense mechanisms go, denial is at the top of the list. That which we don't acknowledge can do us no harm,

that which we refuse to believe can't be real. We don't have to deal with those problems that don't exist. It's a pleasant, un-conflicted world when we close our eyes to the reality of pain, or heartbreak, or addiction or truth. My brother had discovered early that alcohol could dull the pain, could make things better if only for a little while, could step between him and real life. The more he drank, the more he needed. The more he drank, the more distance he could put between himself and those who cared about him. He was sheltered, protected from the consequences of his actions, never forced to be accountable. My daddy, having a lifetime of experience with my mother, simply shifted gears for his son and got him out of one jam after another. He widened his safety net and made sure that nothing closed in, no consequences, no penalties, no healing.

Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.